Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Mike Grasher - Piper Jaffray.
Mike Grasher - Piper Jaffray
Mike, you mentioned a few times AIG and I just want to go back to that with one quick question. What’s been the real impact to date with regard to AIG on the industry?
Mike Stone
Mike, I think at least what we have seen and I think substantially this would be the industry as certainly in the executive product lines for sure, where they were placing very significant limits, sometimes more than that $1 million dollar lines. Risk managers and policy holders are reducing their lines or excluding them from their programs. I’d say more often than not they’re just reducing their lines and that provides opportunities for those of us that don’t put out those size limits, so we can come in and place the $10 million line on these programs.
The same thing applies certainly on large access casualty, certainly large property schedules as well. I think that’s been the major impact. The one we’ve seen the most is on the D&O side; and I would also say, just as an aside, all of our products report that AIG is fairly aggressive in attempting to retain business.
Mike Grasher - Piper Jaffray
Okay and then we have seen some people moving, at least widely publicized. Do you foresee yourselves being engaged in any discussions to bring teams in?
Mike Stone
Mike, we have been engaged in discussions. We’ve not made any sales or no one’s bought yet. Typically, the people that we’ve talked with, with AIG, tend to want a bigger footprint that we have, bigger limits, larger companies and fitting them into our business model has proven a bit difficult, but we’re continuing to engage and discuss to people out there. A lot of them are out talking, I can tell you that.
Mike Grasher - Piper Jaffray
Then one other question before I get back in the queue is, you touched on the surety business and it sounds like maybe some concerns there. Can you elaborate more, just on I suppose as a derivative of the economic situation that the country is in right now?
Mike Stone
Yes actually Mike, my concerns were generalized concerns, not specific concerns to our business. Our business continues to perform very well. We’re going to be very careful on contract surety moving into ?09 as the economy appears to weaken further. I’m not sure what the stimulus will do, but we’re certainly able to move forward if there are opportunities, but we’re going to be very careful. This is certainly one of the first businesses that experiences difficulty in a weakening economy. Certainly the contract side, we tend to play on the smaller contractors. They’re the ones that get squeezed, so we’re going to be very careful.
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